Critical Race Theory has been creeping into the curriculum at GHAPS for several years, and GHAPS leadership made a commitment to indoctrinate the staff beginning in the 2020-2021 school year. The chaos of returning to school after the first major Covid shutdown provided the perfect cover for introducing Critical Race Theory. While parents were busy pleading their cases to mask/or not to mask before school board members, administration was busy indoctrinating.
After the GHAPS Critical Race Theory kick-off professional development day with teacher Hailey Barton on August 25, 2020, the administration went full speed ahead. On March 18, 2021 staff were forced to sit through a 1-hour video presentation featuring Dr. Tyrone Howard entitled Cultural Competency. Tyrone Howard has spent his 20-year career in academia, grew up in Los Angeles County and works for UCLA. He is a race hustler that loves to talk about diversity, equity, race, culture, inclusion, social-emotional learning, gender, anxiety, trauma and difficult conversations. The GHAPS presentation focused on systemic racism and tough conversations.
Here is a short video of Professor Howard.
Next, the May 5th, 2021 professional development session entitled Brave & Courageous Conversations continued the district’s journey into critical race theory. Staff yet again had to attend a 1-hour presentation about white privilege, and how to have brave conversations regarding race.
Often proponents of critical race theory will mention the phrase “Brave Conversations,” or “Uncomfortable Conversations.” When they say this, they are referring to the fact that they are accusing people of being racist, and people are denying that they are racist and this is uncomfortable. For proponents of CRT it is uncomfortable because they are making accusations, but for an average American, it is uncomfortable because they don’t understand what is happening. Please see this article Anti-Racist vs Not Racist – it will explain everything!
You can view the entire Brave & Courageous Conversations presentation here as well as a few select slides below.
Staff members learned about white privilege with a video from Justin Wilford. Some staff members later passed on Justin Wilford’s White Privilege Video to their students in conjunction with a lesson on To Kill a Mockingbird.
This slide talks about white supremacy in our institutions (Critical Race Theory). The phrase “Challenge our Institutions”, it is referring to becoming an anti-racism activist. If you are not familiar with this concept, please see the article Anti-Racist vs Not Racist mentioned above.
Safes Space vs Brave Space is a concept that is referring to a mental status that happens after an innocent person is accused of being a racist by a proponent of the anti-racism ideology. If the innocent person rejects the accusation, they are going to a “safe space” in their mind that lets them live within their denial. If however, they own up to the fact that they are indeed a racist, then they are acting “brave”. They have entered a “brave space”, and are ready for the next step which is to become anti-racist, in other words, an activist. Just to create an added level of confusion, the term “safe space” is also used to refer to a physical location where racial minorities can go that is free from harassment of the racist majority. These are common on college campuses.
In GHAPS, much of professional development training that occurred during the 2020-21 school year focused on Critical Race Theory. When the administration says “Critical Race Theory is not being taught at GHAPS.” They are lying. What they mean is that it is not part of the official curriculum. They are training the teachers in CRT who are training the students. CRT is being taught at GHAPS. The 2020-21 school year was only the beginning. All of the professional development training sessions during the 2021-22 school year also contained Critical Race Theory.